A teenager lay motionless on the road. His leaning face was half-covered by messy hair, eyes closed. His black gakuran school uniform and matching trousers were soaked with sweat. One of the shoes almost successfully left his feet.
There were rumbles of distant lightning beyond the apartment complexes around the boy. A thickening overcast was gathering to hide the strange glow behind. At last, droplets of rain started to fall.
One drop met the teenager’s cheek and caused his fingers to flinch. His monolid eyes opened weakly and blinked before squinting due to another drizzle invasion. He tried to move himself up with both hands as support. He coughed several times before looking up.
The teenager’s eyes glowed. They reflected the heavenly radiance that peeked from behind the heavy clouds. It was like looking at the full moon, yet with much clarity. But it wasn’t the Moon that he witnessed that night.
It was Earth.
Above the abandoned city, above the lumbering danchi public housing towers, was the expansive presence of the planet Earth that stretched over one end of the horizon to the other like a gigantic upside-down arch. Its oceans and seas were azure in color, its swirling clouds were white and ivory. There were patches of deep jungle green and several brown variations. Island chains were presented in all of their glory between the two continents. Needless to say, the panorama made the teenager’s jaw drop.
“Nani... Nanikore?” sputtered the boy as he stood exhausted on the empty street. Around him were different glimmers from wrecked cars. It was as if a bomb just went off there.
The teenager held his right arm up, deliberately blocking the brightness of the overhanging Earth with the silhouette of his hand. For a moment, he played with the shadows made by the fingers before the entire view was completely darkened.
A figure stood before him. Not a man, not even a human. But a towering monster, unlike anything he had seen before. At a first glance, it looked like an enormous gorilla that was completely covered with armor plating. Its arms were disproportionately long with heavy ends and a series of sharp blades protruding from the sides. There were also large insect leg-like structures that jut out from basically everywhere from its body. Where the head should be was another, smaller humanoid figure attached to the main body.
The teenager heard the monster speak in an unintelligible voice. He also saw the creature’s massive arm swing toward him for the deadly smite. More of the anomalous Earth vista was eclipsed.
There was an impact. There was a shockwave that radiated out in a blink of an eye. Raindrops were washed away. The six wheeler cars were wrecked by the incredible air pressure. Windows and street lamps were shattered. The intense gush of wind struck the dazed teenager.
“Nice way to make yourself a seating duck, Rei-chan!” complained the nearby feminine voice.
The teenager glanced. To his right, a female warrior clad in obsidian armor was holding her weapon against the monster’s massive fist. The drill-bladed sword spun at supersonic speed, glowing with a crimson energy signature that acted as a shield against the creature’s attack. There were screeching noises as the two immovable objects collided. Their conflict only brought out another equally-powerful shockwave that made the teenager take a step back.
The warrior girl’s helmet looked at him. No facial features were revealed by the tiger-themed protector, but it was clear that the wearer was furious. “Gogatsu Riamu, snap out of it!”
The humanoid upper body of the monster moved. It seemingly noticed the boy. It spoke again in a strange voice before his left arm began to change. Its armor began to bloat out. New insect legs began to spring from beneath the heavy plates, each ending with stalactite sharpness. Then, the monster swung the arm as it changed into a whip from hell.
Riamu heard his heartbeat. He lunged himself out at the first sight of the weaponized monster arm. He rolled beneath the creature’s massive body just before the centipede-like chain whip destroyed the road behind.
As he crawled, Riamu could see the real clamor around him. There were hordes of other monsters. These were smaller, human-sized, and with a relatively human form. Against them were the other warriors. Their armor glowed among the chaos. Green, yellow, black, white. Riamu was trapped in the middle of a war.
When he crawled his way to the other side, terror filled Riamu’s heart. The monster already turned its body toward him. Its segmented arm flogged the night air with a distinct cracking sound.
“You gotta be kidding me...,” mumbled the teenager to himself. He then glanced at what he could see behind the monster. The warrior girl was still battling the monster. She had to duck the enormous fists while also dodging the whips.
“The perk of being a two-faced demon,” hissed the monster that threatened Riamu as the teenager figured out what just happened. Two figures were conjoined like a twisted version of a Siamese twin. Even the gorilla body had four legs behind it.
Riamu felt pain, then crushing pressure. He felt the content of his stomach trying to move back up the esophagus. He was bound with the centipede whip coiling around his chest. The fragile gakuran fabric was immediately shredded by the sharp insect legs.
“Let’s see what you’re made of,” said the monster as it pulled Riamu closer. The teenager tried to kick, but he wasn’t on the ground anymore.
“Rangda...,” mumbled Riamu. Everything about the creature was unsettling and the details were worse the closer he could see them. Its face is a mask reminiscent of the Balinese demon masks with far-reaching canine teeth. But the eyes were wrong. They were hollow. Empty dark sockets with no signs of anything inside.
From the gaping mouth of the mask, a slithering tongue came out to taste the boy. It left a disgusting trail of saliva all over before sneaking back in. “Savory as a lump of fresh meat like my breakfast, but not remarkable. I guess you’re just a boy in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I kinda disagree!” said the coming voice just before the centipede whip was just by an invisible sharpness. The monster screamed in pain, black blood spurted all over, and Riamu was dropped to the ground yelping. The fall didn’t hurt but wasn’t glorious either.
Riamu realized that another warrior figure had stood to protect him from the ravaging monster. It had beast-themed armor complete with knifelike fin structures on the sides. The figure glanced back at him. “I won’t ask whether you’re okay since that would be a stupid question right now.”
“You got that right,” replied Riamu with short breaths. He could the creature gaining composure to focus its anger on them.
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“This could get messy. I got my orders to get you to a safe place. Do you see that building?” The warrior looked to the right. Riamu’s eyes followed until meeting a white ten-story danchi behind some orange trees. He nodded. “Okay, let’s―”
Three of the hideous foot soldiers launched themselves at the two. Their bodies suddenly were cut into three pieces. Riamu saw a whip, thinking that the main creature had struck them again. But the blades retracted to form a jagged-edged sword at the hand of a warrior. His armor was shiny white with a helmet mimicking the head of a Komodo dragon. “Sorry about being late, they got us on the sucker punch. But we’re not throwing the towel yet. Let’s get this passing play done!”
“Got it! Let’s go!” The red warrior grabbed Riamu’s hand and went off. Behind them, a new battle had begun. The centipede monster summoned more of the foot soldiers to trouble the warriors. The sword’s blade opened up again to form a chain whip that cracked the air while massacring dozens of monsters. But more were coming to chase Riamu.
The teenager could hear them coming. Their shrieks echoed in the abandoned street along with the sound of thunder. Their crescent-shaped claws reflected the street lights’ glow when they struck.
But Riamu felt nothing. No harm attacked him. He looked back while kept on running. The minions were destroyed too. Another silhouette under the lightning strike appeared at the periphery of his eyesight.
It was another warrior, this time in yellow. She spread her arms and wing-like additional armor enabled her to swoop in. She landed behind him and immediately readied her kite-shaped shield. Three sharp blades opened and started rotating. The instrument’s deadly face spun like a giant propeller that cut through the coming monsters. Its attack extended beyond the physical form with the accompanying energy beams from each tip. “Just jump!” she ordered.
“Oh, right.” The crimson warrior turned to Riamu. “Hang on and don’t puke!”
“Huh, what―” Riamu couldn’t finish the sentence. He and the warrior disappeared in a blink of an eye and reappeared further down the boulevard. It happened again and again and again, each time sending them further away from harm. The warrior later sent them up the balconies of the apartment until arriving at the rooftop.
Needless to say, Riamu vomited when he arrived. Thankfully, there was no one below. Disoriented, the teenager saw his savior take another running stance. “Don’t you dare think of leaving me here!”
“What are you, a konnyaku? I gotta go back to help my team―”
“At least tell me what the heck is going on,” yammered Riamu in distress.
“I’m sorry, but―” The crimson warrior finally sighed. “Fine, you won’t remember this later anyway. What do you wanna know?”
“What do I― What is that?!” Riamu’s hands were like presenting the sizable form of the gorilla/centipede/whatever monster that fought the other warriors in the distance.
“That’s Durgasaur, an Asoraku. We’re the Hydraheads who fight him in the Kailashum.” The aquatic warrior saw Riamu’s blank expression. He re-explained using firmer hand gestures that pointed to each important side. “Monsters, heroes, battling it out in an extradimensional arena. Got it?”
Riamu nodded, but he still showed the same deadpan face. “But you’re a dinosaur...,” the teenager mumbled.
“Uh, no, my suit’s based on the Zennyo. I know, it’s the Tyrannosaurus rex. Each one of us has a similar draconic theme.” The Zennyo Hydrahead warrior flicked his fingers. “Now it’s my turn, who are you? How can you get cozy with Kanon?”
“I... I just went home from a gaikyuu selection when everything went to hell!” Riamu remembered something and squinted. “Wait a minute... Kanon?”
The teenager looked at the fighting warriors in the distance. Two males and two females, just like what he remembered. “Are they―”
“No, they’re not! You don’t know them!” cut the Hydrahead, clearly in awkwardness.
That backfired. “It’s them! Kyoto-san, Hakuryu-san, Minatozaki-san, Sagisu-san, it’s them in those suits, right?”
“Stop talking like it’s true!” yelled the warrior, but he increasingly sounded like begging.
“Who are you, then?” stabbed Riamu with the definitive question.
Away from their location, the monstrous Durgasaur slammed his fists, again and again, to try to hit the pesky armored superheroes. The black and yellow Hydraheads somersaulted themselves from the devastating attacks while their white and green teammates launched counterattacks using the whip sword and bulky mace. There were cracking sounds when the deadly weapons hit the monster’s arms and body, prompting him to roar in pain and lash about for retaliation.
Durgasaur retreated with a broken arm that bend the wrong way. He corrected it in no time and the wounds healed almost instantly. “I can prolong this battle until each one of you wears down in defeat, but I have something else on my menu for this evening.”
“Stop him! He’s―” The black Hydrahead’s helmet visor was shattered by the coming shock wave. Like all of her friends, the warrior was thrown off by Durgasaur’s clapping attack. The monster then flung himself into the glowing sky like a heavy rocket.
The distant boom echoed in the air around the apartment roof. Riamu didn’t pay attention to it since he was still eager to find out who the Zennyo Hydrahead was. His counterpart didn’t reply. He instead grabbed the teen by his gakuran blazer and threw him away to the next tower. It was just in time before Durgasaur’s massive body slammed the apartment. Three levels were basically vaporized and the entire building collapsed within seconds.
Riamu rolled helplessly on the concrete floor before his momentum was stopped by an AC unit. He writhed in pain and was in shock when discovered a rising plume of thick dust that quickly overtook the night air. He looked down at the gigantic pile of rubble that was a ten-story danchi.
The debris then exploded as Durgasaur emerged to fight the Zennyo Hydrahead who jumped away to avoid the dangerous gorilla arms. The warrior used his dual blades to release incisive burns on the monster.
Riamu was out of breath. He didn’t know what to do. Another boom would force him to act fast. “Kuso....”
He could feel the floor beneath his feet tremble. For a moment, he lost his balance and had to hold on to the roof ledge. That option didn’t last since the supporting walls started to come down.
Riamu propelled himself toward the AC unit before the roof went tilted. If he lost his grip on the metallic box, he would just slide to his death. Then, the opposite walls began to crack too, sending the roof crashing down on a level below. It started a chain reaction as piles of floors stacked on one another, each adding structural stress to the next.
The pain was almost too much for Riamu. His head throbbed, and his muscles ached from the impact. He tried to escape harm’s way even if it was still disorienting to walk. One wrong step and he could have fallen into a gaping elevator shaft after the nearby concrete slab fell apart.
Coughing, Riamu went down the broken emergency stairs. Everything around him shook due to the fighting outside. Ironically, the building’s partial collapse made his way to the ground floor easier. He didn’t even need to reach the level itself since the lobby and the surrounding area had been crushed under the apartment’s weight. He climbed out one of the hallway windows into a slope of construction detritus.
At least, he tried. Riamu the reverberating voice of Durgasaur who stood dominating the rickety Hydrahead. “Lucky for you, my diet is quite flexible!”
The humanoid figure grabbed his own mouth and forced it to open wide. He kept on pulling it down like a cobra ready to devour an oversized meal. There was also a slithering carpet tongue that immediately slapped the Zennyo Hydrahead before ensnaring him.
The warrior’s helmet hurled up high before impacting Riamu’s window opening with a massive force. The entire building section was destroyed by the crash. The floor above it dipped down due to the loss of the substructure.
Rasping, Riamu dragged himself out of the gap. He was bewildered to find the broken Hydrahead helmet on the sidewalk with its enveloping energy shield slowly dimming away.